No, instead of helping viewers make sense of the world and cut through the spin, mainstream outlets are turning over their megaphones to charlatans like Beck and Andrew Breitbart -- the conservative impresario who parlayed the malicious framing of the USDA's Shirley Sherrod into a gig as an election-night commentator at ABC News.

The newspaper published what it said were excerpts of intercepted conversations and seized documents that purportedly show the election-night protest was directed by Polish and German special services.

That program was reasonably good (although finding four hours of material four a single night inevitably involves a bit of stretching), and was certainly more compelling than Stewart and Colbert's own fairly insipid election-night extravaganza.

No, instead of helping viewers make sense of the world and cut through the spin, mainstream outlets are turning over their megaphones to charlatans like Beck and Andrew Breitbart - the conservative impresario who parlayed the malicious framing of the USDA's Shirley Sherrod into a gig as an election-night commentator at ABC News.

It looks like lefty bloggers aren't the only ones irked by ABC News's decision to tap Andrew Breitbart for election-night analysis: People in ABC's newsroom were also caught completely off guard by the news, a newsroom source tells me.